The cost-cutting program has achieved only 'dubious' savings while sparking racial tensions and contributing to a deadly riot, the prison ombudsman believes

Documents obtained through access-to-information laws reveal problems with the “cook-chill” program, which since November 2014 has had large prisons prepare food and freeze it before shipping to smaller institutions, similar to airline food.

OTTAWA — A program aimed at cutting the cost of feeding federal prisoners has achieved only “dubious” savings while sparking racial tensions and contributing to a deadly riot, the prison ombudsman believes.

Documents obtained through access-to-information laws reveal problems with the “cook-chill” program, which since November 2014 has had large prisons prepare food and freeze it before shipping to smaller institutions, similar to airline food.

“Playing with food can have detrimental effects on the inmate population,” Correctional Investigator Ivan Zinger said in an interview with the National Post. “It can lead to tension.”

Government documents

An April 2015 letter from his predecessor Howard Sapers states that “a large number of inmates are not receiving a complete meal” because of a buffet-style service that frequently runs out of food.

When Mission, B.C. inmates complained that self-serve portions often run out, Correctional Service Canada responded that “we do not have the extra rations prepared or available.”

“This issue is beyond my control,” wrote one prison official, saying they’d asked colleagues “to suggest to the men to be more considerate of their fellow inmates when taking rations.”

As reported two years ago, inmates got sick after eating from malfunctioning heated food carts. Inmates have since phoned the ombudsman to report “eggs have ice on them” and diabetics claim they’ve struggled to get timely access to food.

Government documents

That led the ombudsman’s investigators to visit a handful of institutions to observe meals and photograph them. Images of chunky yellow goo prompted Zinger to respond with a single-word email: “Yuck!” Another investigator emailed his photos under the subject line: “mmmhhh…delicious…”

Alongside the cook-chill system, CSC rolled out a national menu to standardize prison meals across the country. Each inmate is given 2,600 calories, enough for a low-activity man aged 31 to 50 under Canada’s Food Guide.

But Zinger said younger, active men require more calories, and his office estimates 68 per cent of offenders are obese and 8 per cent are diabetic.

Government documents

Zinger said canteen-purchased sausages and potatoes are now being bartered among hungry offenders. “Food has become, in certain institutions, even a commodity. And it’s now being monitored as contraband, because extra food can be provided and traded for other things.”

Within the prisons, the unsightly food has sparked wild rumours. “The food is being tampered with. People are spitting, urinating and putting infected hepatitis C blood in the food,” one inmate claimed in a call to the ombudsman, which was never proven.

He also said the focus on reheating cooked food has closed one of the few career pathways that help inmates re-integrate into the job market, and that the change came as prisons were considering implementing Red Seal cooking certification programs.

The national menu has also sparked racial tension. In one facility, a Ramadan event went sideways when a group of inmates “was supposed to get Halal chicken, but they ended up given regular chicken,” according to one complainant. Around that time, the directive on religious diets mysteriously disappeared from inmates’ internal computers.

Zinger said prisons are also seeing an uptick in people subscribing to religious and medical diets, and he suspects many are doing so simply to avoid the unsightly food. Meanwhile, guards are “circumventing the national menu” by ordering meat and sauce portions separately “as opposed to meat being basically boiled and disappearing in a sauce as it cooks.”

Government documents

With new kitchens, more complaints and wardens changing meal plans, Zinger believes the cost-cutting program has had the opposite effect. “The savings are dubious to me,” he said.

A December 2015 slideshow showed CSC grappling with its $5.35 target to feed each inmate daily, sparking several proposals to save pennies on each meal.

While replacing English muffins with toast would save $0.01, replacing four monthly chicken leg servings with “chicken casserole” to save $0.06 “was the most controversial proposed change due to its popularity.” (CSC kept one monthly chicken leg while replacing the other three with the stew.)

“All this, I think, has made for a bad policy,” Zinger said. “We see now fewer complaints, and I think that’s because of the hard work of wardens to use their autonomy to get around these national policies.”

CSC said in a statement it will complete an internal audit of its food policy in the 2017-2018 year, with results published in late 2018.

“All meals served to inmates must meet appropriate nutrition standards, and each menu must be reviewed and approved by a registered dietitian,” spokeswoman Avely Serin wrote in an email. “When the regular meal plan is not appropriate for a specific offender, an individualized nutritional care plan is used that is based on nutritional assessments.”

CSC houses all adult inmates serving sentences of two years or more, accounting for roughly 40 per cent of the 40,000 incarcerated population. The rest are in provincial and territorial jails, including people awaiting trial or serving community sentences.